I recently read "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. I have a friend who has been recommending it to me for quite awhile now. I went to visit her and her boyfriend, they live in Portland and near Powell's bookstore, and naturally due to the fact that we are both kind of book freaks we got to talking books. And we of course went to Powell's. This is a dangerous place to be for book lovers, true book lovers. You have to be the type of book lover that literally can't get by for even a day without out SOMETHING to read. If you are that type of book lover Powell's is nirvana. The place that you could go and live and die happily. Anyway while there I started talking about how I really wanted something new to read. A new author, a new genre and my friend once again suggested Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." Seeing as I had already gathered quite a few titles I decided against getting it. However when I returned home and went to a used bookstore I picked it up. Then promptly forgot about it.
Eventually I started getting interested in the book. There it sat on my bookshelf staring me in the face. And I started talking about it with my friend and she urged me to give it a try. And so I did. I read it in a couple of days. I loved it. It surprised me, from the very beginning it swept me up and kept a hold on me. Now I'm not usually one for the fantasy genre but this just interested me from the beginning and kept me interested until the very last page.
The story begins with Shadow. An ex-con just getting out of prison, on his way home to bury his wife. A wife who died just a few days before he got out of prison. On the plane ride home he meets a man calling himself Mr. Wednesday. A man that at first seems harmless and then starts telling Shadow things that he shouldn't know. It scares Shadow enough that when they get to the airport instead of making his connection Shadow decides to rent a car and drive the rest of the way home. Somehow Mr. Wednesday catches up to him and offers him a job. After a few drinks Shadow agrees. What follows is an adventure that shakes Shadow to his very core and makes his soul soar to new heights.
He meets gods and goddesses and speaks to them as equals. Although he is at times thrown for a loop he learns to find his footing in this new world. The world of gods from the past and gods of the present. He dines with Thoth and Anubis, meets Bast, plays chess with a Russian god of darkness and is given the moon. It's a world that most of the time confuses him but one that he ultimately feels comfortable in. And one that I grew to love.
This was a great book, one that will stick with me always, one that made me want to read more of the fantasy genre. Something I know will make my friend happy, and one that makes me happy due to the fact that this opens up a whole new world for me. If you enjoy fantasy or are trying to break into that genre "American Gods" is a great place to start!!! I highly recommend it!
Yeah, it's a really powerful book--one that definitely "sweeps you away." They won't all be like that, but that's sometimes good. I find reading "American Gods" to be rather draining, almost devastating, because I feel as if Gaiman forces Shadow's experience onto the reader so expertly, you don't realize how deep you are into it until it's too late to pull out...just like Shadow. ~(''~)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see you enjoyed it though, and gave it such a nice review! =D
Yeah there was a sense of heaviness at the end. Almost as if I couldn't shake the thing. But I appreciated that. I thought it was the perfect feeling to have at the end of that book. So go Gaiman! =D
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